


Close the door

by flintrage



Category: Black Sails
Genre: Jewish John Silver, John Silver is bad at feelings, John Silver is simultaneously touchstarved and touch-averse, M/M, Post-Canon, The OT4 isn't Official(TM) yet but the feelings and potential are there, Unresolved Romantic Tension, it's currently just Madi/Silver and Thomas/Flint and that needs to change, only notable because of the use of 'G-d' but it's there as it is in all my fics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-27
Updated: 2018-12-27
Packaged: 2019-09-28 19:09:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,305
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17188703
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flintrage/pseuds/flintrage
Summary: Written for a prompt request on Tumblr.Set postcanon, in a universe where Silver and Madi come to live with Thomas and Flint and everyone reconciles and blahblahblah. Silver has a bad habit of leaving for days at a time because Feelings Are Hard.





	Close the door

Silver leaves home frequently, but he always comes back. Sometimes when he returns the others are relieved: Madi will kiss him, and Thomas will pull him into a tight embrace that threatens to hurt, and Flint will nod at him from behind them both and his eyes will be terribly soft. Other times it is as though he never left, as though his comings and goings are so expected and predictable as to have become unremarkable. 

Sometimes he returns only to feel like he is being  _ignored_  and has to fight the urge to leave all over again. This is one of those. 

He knows already that Madi is still angry with him and would prefer to be left alone. That Thomas has no desire to speak to him yet and will snap if Silver so much as apologizes (which he won’t). 

He knows also that it’s foolish to expect Flint to receive him any less coldly, but that knowledge doesn’t stop him from entering Flint’s little study-room anyway. It’s a tiny room, made all the smaller for the bookshelves lining it. Flint is writing something at the desk he made himself and he looks up only briefly when Silver enters, but his hand stills over the parchment.

“Close the door,” he tells him.

Silver nearly turns heel then and there: there’s an inherent danger in being alone with Flint, one that he’s been avoiding since he and Madi arrived here. It’s different, when the four of them are together. The energy between them is different, and Silver feels... anchored, tethered to safety. But the moment it’s just him and Flint--  _G-d_ , the very air itself seems to tense with thoughts unaired. It’s unbearable. It is now also unavoidable.

He doesn’t want to close the door. Doesn’t want to open himself to the possibility (to the stupid  _fucking_  spark of hope) that lies behind its closing. But Flint’s voice is a hook sinking into him and  _tugging_  and Silver turns for it, closes the door for it, fights the swelling urge to  _flee._

The door shuts with a soft sound and when Silver turns again Flint has put his quill down and is  _watching_ him with intent, flickering eyes, like he’s searching for something.  _Don’t look at me,_ Silver thinks wildly,  _I don’t want you to see_  and he isn’t sure what it is he needs to hide ( _don’t lie to yourself, yes you are_ ) but he  _needs_  to hide it.

Flint rises from his chair in one slow, lazy movement and Silver’s hand tightens on his crutch hard enough to turn his knuckles white. 

 _Don’t go,_  he wills himself.  _Don’t run._  Because it has taken Flint months to be comfortable around him, but it has taken Silver the better part of a year to keep from leaving for days at a time every other week, rather than every other month.

Flint is moving closer and Silver's throat is so, so dry, and he thinks Flint must sense his dread because he comes to a slow stop  _just_ before the proximity between them becomes something unbearable for both of them.

For Silver it is already unbearable. He is trying so hard just to breathe evenly that he isn’t sure what his face reveals, what his eyes are saying. He feels like Flint can  _see_ him, the truth of him. The thought alone makes Silver’s bones itch under his skin.

Flint is still too close. 

Flint says: “They’re upset with you.” And Silver knows that,  _of course he knows that_ , does Flint think he’s an idiot, and he’s about to protest but Flint holds up a hand (a hand that almost presses against Silver’s chest to silence him, but doesn’t) and says:

“Because every time you leave, they have to consider that this may be the time you decide not to come  _back._ ”

Silver... stares at him. Searches for words, grasps for them, finds few. He looks into those fathomless, mismatched eyes and feels a tug low in his gut, like a hook being pulled.

“You said ‘they’,” he points out. Getting Flint to talk is safer than having to do it himself. “Is that what you think?”

The corner of Flint’s mouth turns up wryly. “I think you can no more leave this place for good than I could. And I think you’re smart enough not to try, lest the three of us be forced to come after you.”

Silver doesn’t know what to say to that, so he says nothing at all and prays for his silence not to speak for him. They stand there, too close to one another, Silver’s hand clenched on his crutch and his breathing a little too fast and Flint’s eyes on him, Flint’s eyes flickering down over his face, searching, wondering--

Then he nods, curt and final, like that's just... it. Like Silver had parried his blow somehow and they're done for the day. Silver stares at him, heart like a hummingbird’s, waiting for-- _something_ , but Flint’s gaze slips away from him and he steps back from Silver without a word. The strangeness that thrummed between them like a heartbeat seems suddenly, startlingly absent.

Silver, thinking himself dismissed (what else is there?), turns to go. He looks at the closed door, the back of his neck prickling, and reaches for the handle. 

Behind him, Flint’s hand falls upon his shoulder and Silver freezes like an animal in fright.

“Actually,” says Flint quietly. “If you wouldn’t mind, there’s something I’d like to discuss, before you go.” And as if that wasn’t fucking terrifying enough, he keeps going. “Something  _we’ve_  been discussing, in your absence.”

This is it, Silver thinks. This is where they tell him to go for good, this is where they take the choice from his hands and throw him out. 

But he’s been waiting for this, so at least he’s prepared.

Silver turns, smiling, willing himself not to clench his jaw or, G-d forbid, choke up. 

“Certainly, Captain. What is it you wish to discuss?” 

Even to his own ears he sounds unlike himself. Or more accurately, he sounds  _too much_  like himself: too much like the deceptively cheery, amicable  _shit_ of a man he’d fashioned himself into once upon a time.

Flint squints at him, a little, but doesn’t falter.

“This,” he says, gesturing between the two of them. “You and I. You and Madi, and she and Thomas, and  _all_  of us. You’ve been here nearly a year--”

Silver can’t fucking bear the thought of dancing around this like an idiot for much longer. He grits his teeth, still smiling, and interrupts-

“Captain, if you’re asking me to leave, I am more than happy to comply. I didn’t really expect any of you to keep--”

“--if you’d let me fucking  _finish_ ,” Flint growls at him, irritated by the interruption, “I’m  _trying_ to tell you that we  _want you here._  That Thomas and I want you, and Madi,  _here_ with us _.”_ And because Silver still isn’t getting the  _fucking point_  and Flint doesn’t have the right language to express it succinctly, he grabs Silver’s free hand, ignores the startled attempt to yank it back, pulls it flush against his chest. Over his heart.  _“With_  us. _”_

Silver swallows hard. Flint's heart is a quick, thumping thing under his palm. "You can't be serious," he says blankly. Because this has to be a joke of some kind, or a dream, or a fucking hallucination. Because Silver does not belong here, cannot belong here. There has to be some message in Flint's words he's misinterpreting.

All the same, he doesn't move his hand from Flint's chest. And when Flint sighs through his nose and dips his head down to kiss him, to drive the point home, Silver - G-d help him - can't find it in himself to pull away.


End file.
